Criticizable Claims for the Validity of Communication Acts in Biological Systems: Therapeutic Implications in Cancer

Abstract

Basis for the comprehension of biological systems are experimentally, and in the case of metastatic tumors also therapeutically derived data, mirroring the context-dependent validity of communicatively integrated systems objects (molecules, pathways, cells etc.). Validity claims of experimentally defined references in terms of systems objects seem to be routinely transferable into arbitrary evolving systems. This transfer is irrespective of the self-evident assumption that novel systems functions may spin off and that those tumors show novel compositions of acquired chromosomal and molecular-genetic aberrations. We are used to transfer references of experimentally defined systems objects into novel situation-embossed systems contexts, even though such experimentally-derived references are inevitably situation-linked and always attributable only ex post, particularly in case of evolving biologic systems. The present paper aims at reconstructing communication-derived rules and at showing how validity claims, which inevitably adhere to objects in biological systems, may be uncovered and therapeutically utilized. Hypothesis-driven tumor models may serve as challenge to reinterpret the myriad of available biological data in a communicative context. The main task remains to reconstruct observable communicative interactions on the expressive level and to select and extend methodologies, which have the capacity to monitor functional changes of cell systems in response to (therapeutic) perturbations.

Keywords

Tumor System Communicative Expression System Object Communication Line System Context

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